THE DEEP ONES: "King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior" by Lord Dunsany

"King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior" by Lord Dunsany

Discussion begins April 17th.

This 1911 play was first published in Five Plays (1914).



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41311/41311-h/41311-h.htm#king

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?852997

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Beyond the Fields We Know

MISCELLANY

http://www.hplovecraft.com/study/articles/hpl-dunsany.aspx
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/dliterature/authors/dunsany/bio/dunsany....
http://www.dunsany.net/18th.htm
http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/5512/King-Argimenes-and-the-Unknown-War...
http://tinyurl.com/cmn4b25

Online for me.

I was fortunate enough to stumble across a cheap cache of Lin Carter Ballantine fantasy with several volumes of Dunsany last year, so I'll be reading from Beyond the Fields We Know:

Online for me -- though I like that cover on >3 paradoxosalpha:.

I will be reading my Boston: Little, Brown, 1919 copy of Five Plays. I feel that this validates my otherwise misspent life of decades of scrounging in thrift shops and used book stores.

>3 paradoxosalpha: & 4

My 7-year-old daughter and I both think it's pretty cool, too. It's not often you see dragons, a pterodactyl, and Pegasus in the same illustration, y'know. 8)

The two online versions have only Act 1. Anyone know if Act 2 is online anywhere?

To answer my own question, the complete play is available in this Gutenberg edition of Five Plays.

>3 paradoxosalpha:,4,6

My three-year-old daughter, who recently became enamored of The Odyssey of all things, really likes that cover too. I dig the artwork used for the Ballantine "Adult Fantasy" novels of that era. Nice catch, paradoxosalpha. Did you do that cover scan?

>5 bertilak:

Traveling first class, bertilak! I think I'll have to fly coach for this one. Online for me, too.

> 9

Naw, I can't take credit for the cover image. I don't even use it in my catalog, preferring front covers only. But I was pleased that it was here on LT all the same!

>8 AndreasJ:

Thanks for that, Andreas. I had just assumed it was a one-act play.

>8 AndreasJ:,11

Yes - thanks Andreas. Adjusted in >1 semdetenebre: above.

I loved that Dunsany felt he had to add the footnote, for the benefit of those readers who might not perceive the delusional condition of King Darniak and his queens: "It is not necessary for the prophet's hair to be at all unusual." I imagine the prophet looking something like Paul Krugman.

This play should be performed now. I think that the superficially fixated, blind-eye perceptions of Darniak's queens make for a particularly apt representation of a large part of the population of the U.S. at the moment. The queens would have thrived on entertainment news and American Idol!

Even though this is a rather sparse play, that magical Dunsanian flow is still there.

Lin Carter called this play "the most fantastic" of Dunsany's stage plays. Now, I like it a lot, but I don't really see the "fantastic" element, other than it being set in an imaginary time and place. Even that is somewhat diluted by the reference to the hanging gardens of Babylon.

>15 paradoxosalpha:

You're right, there is nothing overtly fantastic going on here, beyond the likes of "Come into my right arm, O ancient spirit, O unknown warrior's soul! And if thou hast the ear of any gods, speak there against Illuriel, god of King Darniak". It would seem that the "unknown warrior's soul" may have heard after all. Carter may have simply meant the very "magical Dunsanian flow" which I refer to in >14 semdetenebre:.

As for cinematic touchstones, am I alone in picturing Argimēnēs and Zarb in Act 1 as being played by Graham Chapman and Terry Gilliam?

Amusing. I thought it was a little dubious that such knuckleheads could come into power in the first place, though I suppose it does happen in reality from time to time (*cough* George W. Bush administration *cough*).

>15 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, the weird content of the play is pretty minimal, unless we are to believe that Argimenes really was empowered by the unknown warrior.

> 13, 16

Here is a cast photo of Argimēnēs and his posse from a 1914 staging: http://floridamemory.com/items/show/255629.

To me Argimēnēs sounds like a Greek name. With the macrons over the 'e's I suppose it is pronounced ar-jih-MEE-nees. I can believe Darniak as a Persian name. This is not used in the play; all we know about the time is that a bronze sword can be a formidable weapon and it is after the Hanging Gardens. The suggestive names give us a background subtext of neighboring kingdoms with generations of friction between them.

I agree that there is little weird content here. The unknown warrior does not appear and the gods appear indifferent to the destruction of their idols.

What does abound is graceful irony, with a background of bitterness. The king brought so low that he covets a bone and waits for a superannuated dog to die to get another bone! Zarb thinks King A should be consoled that the king has at least had good memories, but Argimēnēs realizes that "It is very terrible to have been a king." The ruined king to me suggests Lear and Richard II's "sad stories of the death of kings; / How some have been deposed ...".

Argimēnēs seems to have been broken, but gets his mojo back when he finds the sword. Even so, Zarb has to explain the realities to him: "It is better to look like a king. It is looks that they would go by." King A has to grasp that kingliness is not an essence. It is perceived. Then Zarb, the voice of 'reason' explains why one would want to be a king: "Why—then you will wear a purple cloak again, and sit on a great throne, and ride a prancing horse, and we shall call you Majesty." That seals the deal.

As for the coup in Act II, I have some intuitions about the situation, although they are not supported directly by the text:

(1) Argimēnēs and Darniak are basically the same. If Darniak had been enslaved instead, the same events would have played out with the characters reversed.

(2) When Argimēnēs is retaking power, he seems courageous and decisive, whether due to the spirit of the Unknown Warrior in the sword, or that he was not utterly broken by slavery. How long will this last?

(3) After 5 or 10 years, will the court of Argimēnēs be as vapid and clueless as that of Darniak?

The ending, in which Argimēnēs still wants the dog's bones, is priceless. He still does not understand his new position. And Zarb's protest at burying the dog and addressing Argimēnēs as Majesty is wonderful. Zarb does not yet understand that they don't need dogs bones any more. Furthermore, he knows how degraded Argimēnēs had recently been, yet he addresses him as Majesty: he is buying into the royal illusion that he, Zarb, helped recreate.

It's not a very flattering picture of humanity, is it? Basically every character in the play (except the prophet) is kind of a dolt.

There's some virtue in the idol-guard, even if he gets the short end of the stick.

>18 bertilak:

That is one impressive online find: a cast shot from 1914! Though the costumes and set aren't terribly impressive, from this photo.

> 18

The actors in that photo are apparently members of the Koreshan Unity, a rather endearingly nutty sect that, among other things, believed that Earth is hollow and that we're living on the inside. Apparently their literary tastes were better than their astronomy.

Argimēnēs indeed sounds Greek. Fooling around a bit with the Perseus project's tools, it seems like it may be interpretible as "White Moon" plus a masc. ending.

One theme that struck me is that Argimēnēs, having once been free, suffers worse from slavery than Zarb, who has not, but is also therefore the one who can rebel. A less than uplifting message for the downtrodden, it's true.

I'd just read about one of the Nazi leaders (Himmler?) who also believed in the Hollow Earth theory, and at one point was responsible for sending ships into the Pacific with special cameras, pointing up, in expectation of catching Allied ship movements in the Atlantic. Allegedly Hitler was none too pleased.

ETA I note belatedly that AndreasJ reviewed a book on Hollow Earth theories, so perhaps the above anecdote appeared there, as well. My introduction to it came from the recent Nazi Seance book, part of the Early Reviewers giveaway, so mostly not about Hollow Earth at all.

> 24

De Camp and Ley's Lands Beyond, which by coincidence I read last week, has a brief section on supposed Nazi German experiments based on the concave hollow Earth idea. In their version the attempt was made on Rügen, which would undoubtedly be more practical that getting data back from the Pacific to Germany.

I do have a suspicion the story's a myth however. I've seen it referenced in a number of places, and Lands Beyond is the only that gives a source at all, but the one they give is a 1946 popular article, and the WP page on Hollow Earth ideas says there's apparently no historical documentation for such an attempt. Standish's Hollow Earth dismisses it as probably not true. (Oddly, his summary of the story puts the attempted observations on the Baltic island of Hogan, which neither I nor WP have heard of. Someone's bad handwriting for Rügen?)

None of which has very much to do with Argimēnēs et consortes, but I hope it may still be interesting to fans of the weird.

ETA: elenchus edited his post as I was replying. The Hollow Earth book I reviewed is precisely the Standish one; so, yes, the story appears there, but Standish doesn't buy it. It's on p275 of the paperback.

Yes, apologies for the thread hijack, but I thought Hollow Earth asides did have their place here! I found it all very interesting.

And hope to get around to reading the Dunsany, but I'm posting surreptitiously here at work. More difficult to actually read a play than pop back and forth into this forum.

>18 bertilak:

Cool photo! 8)

>21 paradoxosalpha:

I think the fact that there is merely an idol-guard (singular) rather than idol-guards (plural) is in and of itself indicative of how moronic Darniak and his court are. That is, if the idol is really that fucking important, wouldn't you want to have more than one person guarding it? :/

> 23-25

The go-to book for this sort of thing is Joscelyn Godwin's Arktos.

28 > I confess I don't like Godwin's book much. Anyway, it has a section about Koreshanity, but seemingly nothing on any Nazi experiments in concave hollow earthry.

("Concave Hollow Earth" is a horrible term! We should call it "inverted cosmology" or something. Maybe just follow Cyrus Teed and go with "cellular cosmogony"?)

Regarding the idols (back to Argimēnēs now!), the emphasis on knocking down the other king's idol reminded me of the ancient Near East, and the enthusiasm they had for carrying away the gods of defeated enemies. It's part of what gives the story sort of Near-Eastern feel to me.

What I like about this group is the full bore, suck the marrow from the story, approach this group has. After I read this story, I shrugged and said a little whimsy, some sardonic observations. Now I appreciate it more.

As to the Koresh picture, I love it. I believe Kossy's Kooks has a nice section on them.

The only thing I have to add is that the slavery in the story seemed, in the details mentioned, a bit on the gentle side.

> 30

Marrow? Yes, we love bones!

Bones!

>30 RandyStafford:

...a bit on the gentle side.

Floggings aside!